Friday, June 26, 2009

Driving a VW suggests you're smart, he says

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist at University of New Mexico. Click here for biography. David Brooks' column today was inspired by Geoffrey Miller's book called Spent: Sex Evolution and Consumer Behavior. Apparently Brooks thinks the ideas in Spent are too biological and not focused enough on "nurture." Miller's book was ranked #1,750 on Amazon, well behind Michael Jackson.

This is the sort of topic that Brooks should have well-developed ideas about, because of Brooks' book called Bobos in Paradise.

I don't understand how people can be so passionate about whether it's nature or nurture that dominates. I don't really understand how anyone knows or why we think that people generally are more governed by nature or by nurture. Maybe you could tell for some individuals, but I think we're a long way off when it comes to deciding whether humans generally are dominated by nature or nurture or whether a majority of humans are dominated by one or the other. The limits of human understanding matter.

Human motivation and cause and effect are huge mysteries, insofar as I can tell.

No comments: